quickbooks

Get Peachtree Accounting Pro 2009 for free

Here's a fiscally responsible business move: Pay $140 for Peachtree Pro Accounting 2009 now, and get a $140 rebate in 4 to 6 weeks.

You can thank Staples for this eventual freebie (even shipping is free, though you'll probably have to pay sales tax). Just don't wait too long to push through your purchase order; the rebate deal expires this Saturday, May 9.

Designed for small businesses, Peachtree Pro Accounting helps with payroll, invoices, inventory, reporting, and stuff like that. As I understand it, it compares favorably with QuickBooks.

CNET hasn't reviewed the 2009 edition, and … Read more

Intuit "stimulus program" benefits small businsses, but not end users

Intuit, makers of the accounting product QuickBooks for small business, and the consumer accounting apps Quicken and TurboTax, today announced a cleverly-named "stimulus package" for its small business products.

The program, Small Business United, consists of reduced-price services or extended trial periods on online apps. For example, the Inuit Online Payroll services is now free for six months ($9.95 a month thereafter). Intuit-hosted small business Web sites are now free for a full year ($4.99 a month afterward).

More interesting than the effective price drops on Inuit small business products is the competition the company is … Read more

Slick data-visualizer launched for QuickBooks users

Intuit is announcing on Monday a Flash-based Web service that companies can use to geographically visualize their customer data and business activity.

Customer Explorer is being unveiled at this week's Adobe Max conference in San Francisco. Customer Explorer, available at the Intuit Workplace, imports QuickBooks data and overlays it on a live map.

Users can view where their customers are clustering or which regions generate the most revenue. They can also generate time slices of the data, much like a moving weather map, to see how their business has been evolving. And they can overlay regional demographic information, such … Read more

QuickBooks 2009 to handle 100 currencies

Intuit shared details of bookkeeping app QuickBooks 2009 on Monday. With this release, the company aims to broaden the focus beyond the ledger book, providing a management center for small businesses that includes expanded online banking, support for transactions in more than 100 currencies, and 12 months of free Web hosting.

The applications are set to arrive in stores October 8.

The 2009 release targets businesses that do work globally, whether that means say, shipping vintage Disney toys to eBay buyers in Japan or employing basket weavers in Uganda. At least 30 percent of QuickBooks users handle international transactions, according … Read more

Accounting on the go: Quickbooks for iPhone and Blackberry

Quickbooks, one of the leading accounting packages for small businesses, has just released web interfaces for Blackberry and iPhone. The iPhone version, seen to the left, sports a very slick UI and allows easy, at-a-glance access to all of your financial information, entered into Quickbooks Online.

At first glance, the web app provides a simplistic view of things. Features included are looking at who owes you, who you owe, vendors, employees, and bank accounts. Despite the initially simplistic look, as you drill down, you uncover a whole new level of detail.

Even though this seems to be a killer app … Read more

Intuit getting into the hosted app business

Intuit is announcing today its entry into the growing app platform market. Like Salesforce has done, Intuit's new QuickBase Developer Program will let developers create and sell add-on Web apps that tap into the company's core product: QuickBooks. And like Salesforce, Intuit will market these third-party apps directly to its customers via a promotional channel in the core app. Intuit will go after the small-business market with the program, leaving the enterprise space for Salesforce--even though both companies have customers in the other's main market.

Intuit claims an addressable market of 3.6 million companies that use … Read more

Checking out Intuit's stealth invoice manager

After I wrote up Zoho Invoice (review), I got a call from Intuit, makers of QuickBooks (which Zoho may integrate with some day). They had news for me: Intuit has a free Web-based invoicing app too: Intuit Billing Manager. And it's been out since September.

Well, slap me silly. For some reason Intuit hasn't publicized this neat little app. But my Zoho writeup got under their skin, and they called to give me a demo.

I found Intuit Billing Manager a strong invoicer for the very small business. Getting started takes very little time, and it shows you … Read more

QuickBooks update shreds Mac files

Updated 1:55pm with comment from Intuit below.

Mac users who installed an update to their QuickBooks software over the weekend were met with a nasty surprise: missing data.

If you're a user of Intuit's QuickBooks accounting software for small businesses on your Mac, and you haven't installed an update pushed to users over the weekend, don't.

The update caused several Mac users to lose data from their Desktop folders, infuriating many who were hoping to close their books this week for 2007, only to lose valuable purchase orders and spreadsheets. This problem doesn't appear … Read more

Intuit vs. Web 2.0: Entry-level QuickBooks software is now free

Intuit is making the 2008 version of its entry-level small-business accounting product, QuickBooks Simple Start Edition, free. Previous full versions of the program sold for $99.95, and "more than 300,000 businesses" use the product. So why give it away?

Intuit's pitch is that it wants to encourage entrepreneurs to take the plunge and launch their dream businesses, and removing the $100 barrier to basic accounting software is its way of proving it. Alongside the launch of the 2008 version, there's a new "Just Start" marketing campaign and contest, in which one person … Read more